STEPS Member Amber Huff will chair a Panel Conference at The American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting 2018.

ABOUT THE EVENT

Deepening inequalities, socioeconomic exclusion, persistent poverty, fractured identity and loss of esteem are all features of rural areas today. All of these characteristics have been associated to differing degrees with the crises of ostensibly ‘progressive neoliberalism’ (Fraser 2017) and the rise of regressive and often contradictory forms populism (Scoones et al. 2017). ‘Authoritarian populism’ (Hall 1979, 1998) describes a broad politics, resonant with appeals to ‘the people’ and characterised by the rise in prominence of discourses of aggressive protectionism and nationalism, growing concern over the ‘other’ and a radical deregulation of private industry, while at the same time utilising state powers to privatise resources and services and increase surplus for a minority. Using conceptual tools of political ecology alongside other approaches from critical social science and radical practice, papers presented in this session explore the historical and political-economic roots the current conjuncture, the emergence of and responses to authoritarian populism in different forms and rural settings throughout the world. In different ways, presenters address key questions: How are political cultures produced, contested and resisted in diverse rural spaces? Amidst these politics, how do tensions play out along the intersecting axes of social difference like race, class and gender? How are rural landscapes and experiences shaped by and also shaping these wider politics? How is ‘emancipation’ envisioned? What is lost in dominant media narratives? This session is part of the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI).

SPEAKERS

Amber Huff, Christopher Neubert, Justa Mayra Hopma, Karina Benessaiah, Wendy Wolford

RELATED EVENTS

This Session is followed by a second panel session Emancipatory rural politics II: resisting, mobilizing and creating alternatives.